


A Tree Called Life

by amoama



Category: The Bletchley Circle
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amoama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Millie and Susan always planned to get to Saint-Louis, although life gets in the way, eventually they both manage it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tree Called Life

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to my beta Lilithilien for indulging me so thoroughly and whipping this into shape.
> 
> Covering off the _unrequited love/pining_ square of my trope bingo, and kinda, _The Way We Were: Pre-Canon Fic_ of Ladies' Bingo for the first two chapters. #score
> 
> A much used but always powerful e.e. cummings poem provided the title and theme -quoted in full at the end. <3

**Millie and Susan: 1943**

It's sodden on the ground in Buckinghamshire. The moment they had stepped outside the huts that evening, their shoes sank two inches into the slush. And the rain's still falling. The sound of it on the roof of their lodgings is the same as the machines: harsh, churning and relentless. They lie awake listening to it. They're not going to get any sleep.

It's Millie who speaks out first into the darkness.

"Casablanca, Marrakesh, then where? Saint-Louis?"

She can hear Susan turning towards her on the other bed, shifting the sheets around to stay warm.

"You're counting on me getting us by with my school French then?" Susan asks her.

"Now, now, I am the linguist after all, and when this bloody war is over I never want to speak another word of German again, let alone decipher it written in convoluted code. French will be just the thing."

"Well, this trip you're planning will give you plenty of opportunities to perfect it."

"This trip _we're_ planning, Susan. If you want to go somewhere else after Marrakesh, just say the word. We could go across the top of Africa first if you'd prefer, or through the middle on camels?"

"No, this makes good sense if we're going to tackle the West at all."

"The White Man's Grave," Millie teases.

"Lucky we're not men then, I suppose," Susan quips and it makes Millie smile to herself. Susan's a stubborn old thing when she sets her mind to something. She's the one that makes this trip feel like more than two silly girls fantasising the war away.

Millie pictures Senegal's 18th century capital city sprawled out next to the ocean, imagines them walking along a sea promenade with bare feet on warm boards. No mud and no rain. A carefree Susan is something Millie's looking forward to experiencing.

"Saint-Louis sounds beautiful," she tells Susan, even though they've both read the same travel books. "Old buildings on the seafront, an ocean port, the government palace. All the hotels have swimming pools and little decks to drink out in the sun. My book makes it sound like paradise. A dry, sun-drenched paradise."

The rain seems to land harder on the roof tiles while Millie speaks and Susan sighs at the reminder of reality.

"Yes, Saint-Louis sounds perfect. Light the candle quickly, Millie, I'll put a pin on the board now."

Millie reaches for the matches beside her bed and the candle flickers on, light dancing against the wall, illuminating the map they have tacked up between their beds. Susan is half lit up by warm light, half hidden by dark shadow as she stretches her arm up and moves a pin with the string showing their planned route, down to Saint-Louis, Senegal.

For a second, both Susan and the map look strange and distant in this half light, both a part of a dreamlike state that Millie can only look at but not touch. Don't forget to take me with you, she wants to cry out suddenly. She shakes her head a little to get rid of the cobwebs.

Susan turns her head to smile down at her matter-of-factly.

"Done," she says, with such a Susan-like finality, that Millie is instantly comforted. The pin will still be there in the morning, just like all the other pins, and perhaps Susan will even make a note in her book of projected transport and accommodation costs so they can add it to their budget.

Susan moves quietly to the edge of Millie's bed and Millie leans up a little, into the candlelight, so they can both admire their plans.

"It'll be a great adventure, won't it?" Susan says, resting her hand lightly on Millie's shoulder. Millie tries not to warm too much to the touch. 

"I can't wait," she tells Susan. "Saint-Louis, here we come."

Susan leans over and blows out the light.

"Well, goodnight then," she says, squeezing Millie's shoulder and then releasing it to go back over to her own bed.

They listen to the rain again for a long moment.

"Gosh, it's cold now, isn't it?" Susan says, the brittle tone in her voice giving truth to her words.

"Well, bring your blankets over here if you're cold. We'll double up." Nothing could sound warmer.

"Yes, alright," Susan says and drags her bedding back across the room to Millie. "Shove up then," she commands as she clambers into Millie's single bunk. Millie moves herself back against the wall and lets Susan lie down next to her. She puts her arm over Susan as they curl up together. Somehow the sound of Susan's quiet breathing drowns out the rain. It's all Millie needs to drift off to sleep. 

 

**Millie: 1947**

Millie arrives in Saint-Louis after a peaceful three day stay in the Lompoul Desert. The tents had been set up on a raised wooden floor, the mosquito nets hung like veils around the mattresses and the men running the camp had used a big bonfire to cook her dinner on each night. It was the furthest she had felt from war and machines and, well, her life, really. Of all the places she had run to so far, this small stretch of desert felt the most peaceful and the most secluded. The quiet had stretched out around her blissfully. It had been just what she needed.

Saint-Louis on the other hand, is much more lively. Every building here is either a temporary shack or over 100 years old. The ancient and the transient fit together without complaint. It's a small city seemingly filled with business men and jazz players. The swimming pool at L'Hotel de la Poste looks out over the Faidherbe Bridge and although Millie can't afford to stay there over night she goes instead to sit by the pool and drink cool gin cocktails in the heat of the afternoon. She writes her postcard to Susan, as she's done at every one of the stops on her trip. She keeps it simple, she doesn't really know if Susan will want to hear from her, busy as she is with a small child and a wounded husband. Do it for both of us, she'd said when she'd told Millie she wouldn't be coming.

There are lots of chances for Millie to practice her French with the soldiers garrisoned on the island and the diplomats' wives stationed round the pool, but the woman who catches Millie's eye is a small waspish-looking typist who comes every day to eat the rice and fish lunch and sit on the ice box while she works.

Millie takes to interrupting her with martinis and forcing her to commit to at least five minutes of conversation every hour. Her name is Violette and her French has a Marseilles-twang that Millie can only identify because all the other women are so rude about it. Violette has a habit of brushing over the mildest of Millie's interruptions with an abruptness that instantly reminds Millie of Susan. Unlike Susan, however, when she realises her single-mindedness has made her rude, Violette stops suddenly, breathlessly almost, and looks openly up at Millie to apologise - something that is much more like Lucy than anyone else.

Millie makes it her mission to talk Violette into dinner at the Hotel du Palais. She notes the flush to Violette's cheeks when she finally resorts to asking her directly. Susan's cheeks only turned that colour when caught up in the success of cracking the day's code.

Violette, it turns out, is working as a translator as well as a typist for an American historian out of New York. Her English is far better than Millie's French. She tells Millie she spent most of the war in Casablanca looking after her elderly parents. She's forthright when she appeals to Millie, "What else could I do?"

Millie doesn't know what to tell her, isn’t sure what she’s really asking. She doesn’t need to ask what happened to Violette’s parents. In return, Millie can't say anything about her own war, she doesn't like to lie and say she drove a truck or any of that rot. When Violette asks her why she's in Saint-Louis, Millie isn't sure she can answer that either. She's come down here because she's in search of adventure, to see a bit of life, to get that feeling of freedom. All that's still true she supposes. Except, when she says it aloud, it all just sounds a little too much like, _lost_ , with no sense of purpose. Saint-Louis was just the next pin on the map, a route planned out carefully by girls with more spirit than they knew what to do with, and more affection than they knew how to channel. Violette looks at Millie with far too much understanding but Millie just feels Susan's abandonment all the more clearly. There would have been nothing to explain if Susan were here. 

She hadn't felt this way in the desert, perhaps because it was never a stop on their map. It had been a suggestion from a journalist she'd met in Marrakesh who was travelling in the other direction.

Violette is flushed again under Millie's gaze, perhaps it's the wine, but it's enough to make Millie think it might be time to let go of that old map and go her own way.

 

  
 **Claire and Susan: 1957**

Île Saint-Louis is an oasis from the crushing industry of Dakar, the capital-in-waiting where Timothy, as First Secretary to the British Ambassador, is posted. Susan and Claire are driven across the Faidherbe Bridge to the old town. The windows are open so they can benefit from the cool air rising off the water and Susan admires the quiet luxury of the buildings waiting to greet her on the small stretch of island. The tension of the last couple of months - packing, moving, settling - slips from her shoulders.

They stay in the Hôtel Sindoné, small but up-market, to reflect Susan's status but not over-stretch their personal allowance, as befits the wife of a British Diplomat travelling with her daughter. Her every move and decision has political consequences these days, or at least, will be endlessly gossiped over at the Club.

Still, an adventure is what you make of it, Susan reminds herself firmly, and here she is, with her daughter, having an adventure together: just the girls. Timothy had raised his eyebrows at her when she'd proposed the trip, but he'd known better than to forbid it. "It's exactly what I need, darling," she'd told him. "Jacques will drive us, we'll be perfectly safe."

And it does feel safe. Despite being highly visible as a white woman, she doesn't feel like a target here. She doesn't worry that her children will see psychopaths waiting outside their windows. She hasn’t felt that way for years, she left all that behind in London. Susan can’t help but be grateful for it. 

She's heard from the girls here and there. Just one more postcard – from London this time. Millie's note had made her smile, then frown, then bark out a laugh. Things go on without her, this Women's Sleuthing Circle she'd inadvertently started and she worries for them constantly. In another life, she would still be with them.

Instead she pats her skirt pocket that holds two postcards in it, ten years apart, both from Millie. She takes her daughter's hand and they step out into the heat of the Quai Henri Jay to explore the island.

Susan shows Claire the postcard Millie sent from Saint-Louis, dated VE Day 1947, the front is a picture of a hotel with the bridge stretching out behind it. The back says simply, "Good swimming. Good gin. Too much bloody fish. French improving. Wish you were here but, as always, _anywhere I go… my dear._ M." 

"Aunt Millie came here?" Claire asks, surprised. Susan knows her daughter thinks this is the end of the world. She's just now leaving behind that stage that assumes her mother's life started with her own.

"Oh yes, after the war, your Aunt Millie went everywhere." Except Mumbai of course, India was too hot back then. 

"Are we looking for where she stayed?" Claire asks, examining the postcard intently for clues.

"Yes, darling, that's right."

"On the back it says Rue du General de Gaulle," Claire tells her, the pronunciation leaving a lot to be desired.

"Does it?" Susan asks, wondering how much before Millie's visit it got that name. "Well, that's good, we're going the right way then."

They'd passed the hotel as they'd driven onto the island so Susan knows all they have to do is walk up the sea line back to the bridge and they'll find it. She waits though and lets Claire spot it.

"Mummy, I see it!"

"Oh well done, darling." She holds onto Claire's wrist tightly as they cross the busy road that serves as the only entrance onto the island. Claire is jumping up and down, pointing and smiling up at Susan.

The hotel reception is dark compared to the sunlight, and Susan has to blink a few times before she can take anything in.

There's a rack of postcards next to the unattended concierge's desk. "Mummy, look, it's the same one as we've got."

It's true, the photo's the same, in fact, from the curled edges of the postcards, it looks like they're from the same batch as Millie's.

"Let's have one then," Susan tells Claire, "We can write back to Aunt Millie, it will make her smile."

Susan pictures Millie's face when the postcard arrives, wonders what memories it will evoke for her. She'll smile, certainly, but Susan can also see the soft pain and nostalgia that she knows Millie will feel. She can almost hear the small sigh, that always-present remembrance of what might have been. Susan feels it herself, but she can't let it get the better of her. She rests her hand on Claire's head, ruffles it a little as Claire protests, "Mummy, stop it!"

"Sorry, darling," Susan replies, pulling herself back to the present. She puts a coin on the desk for the postcard. The concierge finally comes running up to welcome them, gesturing them further inside. "La piscine?" Susan asks, and they're ushered through the grand restaurant and up onto a roof garden with beautiful decking and a long bar at one end of the pool.

It's beautiful and even Claire stops her fidgeting to admire it. There are two other women at the far end, clearly interested in their arrival. Susan resigns herself to introductions later.

Susan hands Claire her swimming suit before she has a chance to ask for it and Claire runs off to change in the small thatched cubicle.

Susan orders a gin and tonic and sits by the pool to watch Claire enjoy the water. It's blissful, the heat fading as the sun starts to set. Susan puts the postcards in front of her, thinks about what she wants to write to Millie.

She's finally made it to one of the stops on their list. She thinks of that map tacked to their wall in Mrs Cantor's attic, remembers how much she wanted it, their future, so furtively planned. After all, talking about "after the war" was tempting fate. In the pool, Claire demonstrates a lopsided breast stroke that makes Susan smile. How inexact their plan was, and yet how wonderful that it can still come to pass, different but no less good. She feels intrinsically connected to Millie as she sits here, as if the place was waiting for her, only slightly more crumbled and run-down than when Millie sat here. The gin is still good, the view is still breathtaking, fish and rice is still the only meal on the menu. She can hear jazz being played down the street somewhere. It's as though she's been here before, there’s something so familiar about the scene that it's almost a memory. She wouldn’t be surprised, just now, if Millie strode in and leaned on the bar beside her. Susan can nearly see herself ordering Millie’s drink in readiness.

How true it is, Susan thinks, _anywhere I go you go, my dear_. She knows the poem by heart and before she can question herself or its meaning, she writes it out in full on the back of the postcard.

She looks up again to see Claire splashing madly. Framed by the fading sunlight she looks unworldly, like a naughty sprite come alive in the twilight to cause mischief. Susan waves at her and wishes fervently, _never be ordinary, my darling daughter._

 

  
‘i carry your heart’ by E.E. Cummings  
 _i carry your heart with me (i carry it in_  
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere  
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done  
by only me is your doing, my darling)  
i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want  
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)  
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant  
and whatever a sun will always sing is you  
here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows  
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart  
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)  



End file.
